AISD approves $99M bond election

The Amarillo Independent School District Board of Trustees has approved a bond election that would address overcrowding with the construction of a new elementary school and two sixth-grade campuses, along with classroom additions at seven campuses.

The $99.45 million bond issue discussed at the board’s Tuesday meeting also includes several security measures and facility improvements.

AISD’s enrollment, which stands at 33,332 students, has been rising steadily since the 2007-08 school year, and many of its campuses have dealt with overcrowding by adding portable classrooms.

The district has 86 portable buildings across its campuses, amounting to 160 classrooms, AISD Communications Director Holly Shelton said.

The $14.4 million elementary school campus included in the bond issue would be located in the Riata housing division at Northeast 34th Avenue and North Grand Street, and would feed into Caprock High.

“If (the Riata division) continues growing like it’s projected to, then in the future, we’ll need a new campus,” said Dr. Aaron Pan, a co-chairman of the committee that made recommendations for facility improvements to the board in January. “Right now, all students in that area are going to Tradewinds, and that campus is at capacity already and can’t absorb new students.”

Sschool board president Jim Austin said Tradewind has 200 more students than the campus was designed to hold. The construction of six additional classrooms at the school is under way, and the campus has three portable buildings, Shelton said.

The bond issue also includes the construction of sixth-grade campuses at Bowie Middle School and Travis Middle School, both projected to cost $12.65 million. Bowie and Travis have the highest enrollments of AISD’s middle schools, with 1,018 students at Bowie and 995 at Travis.

“We’ve seen how successful the Allen Sixth-Grade Campus for Horace Mann Middle School was when it was built,” Pan said. “Test scores and grades improved dramatically, and it increased morale and lowered behavior problems.”

Austin said the Allen campus allowed teachers to give extra attention to its students and prepare them for the upcoming academic rigor of seventh and eighth grades. “The sixth-graders are on a different timeline as far as when they arrive and leave,” he said. “They’re at a different level of maturity than seventh- and eighth-graders.”

Classroom additions at seven campuses are also included in the bond issue, with six additional classrooms for Hamlet, Mesa Verde and Coronado elementaries and Crockett Middle School and eight-classroom additions for Tascosa High School, Houston Middle School and Rogers Elementary School, for a combined projected cost of $12.93 million.

“All these schools have overcrowding situations that need to be remedied,” Austin said. “Portable buildings are not very efficient and have to have their own water, sewer, heating, air conditioning and the transfer of students from the campus to the portable. We’d like to reduce the money spent there.”

Another item on the bond issue involves the construction of an expanded cafeteria at Eastridge Elementary School, where lunch at the current cafeteria runs from 10:30 a.m. to 1:40 p.m. due the school’s high enrollment numbers.

“It takes staff away from instructional time when you have to do that,” Pan said.

“It’s a very small cafeteria,” Austin said. “It’s just not a good time to be eating on either end of spectrum, and it’s not a normal school practice.”

After campus security was thrust into the national spotlight following the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., AISD has considered measures to boost campus security, Austin said.

The bond issue would involve $8.67 million in renovations to 13 of its elementary school entrances to redirect visitor traffic from front doors directly into the schools’ main offices.

“The secure entrances would feed visitors into the main office, and after the first bell, all other doors will be locked except for the main entrance area,” Pan said.

The bond issue devotes $5 million to increased camera surveillance with enhanced video images at all of its campuses.

Other facility improvements in the bond would involve placing synthetic turf at the middle school football fields for $5.4 million and HVAC replacement for $17.79 million.